Sounding the City is an online exhibition dedicated to capturing urban environments and re-imagining their soundscapes through site-specific installations and acoustic interventions.

LOKI designed the visual identity, website and collateral material for the launch event including invitation cards, a newsprint zine, and postcards guiding visitors to the live installations. The identity proudly features a pre-release of FeedType‘s More Gothic typeface.

Each newspaper includes a digital download to STC 001 MUSIC. Contact us if you want a publication!

In November 2016, we launched the first instalment of ‘Sounding the City’ as a week-long exhibition at Espace Pop in Montréal. For our launch, we worked with LOKI on a newspaper publication with photos and information about the sites and installations. The publications were distributed during the launch and exhibition. During the exhibition, three installations were active at different locations in the city. This was indicated on our website and postcards with a map + directions were dispersed at the gallery to help visitors find the installations.

These installations were active during our exhibition. Check out the Sounding the City website for more info!

In October, we hosted If You Got Ears on CKUT 90.3 FM. Listen to each episode here:

Montréal Sound Map Soundtracks featured field recordings from the Montréal Sound Map in combination with musical textures submitted by artists in Montréal and abroad. The field recordings and music were randomly paired and unfolded seamlessly over the course of the show, resulting in a long duration collaborative composition.

Sound & Architecture featured Gascia Ouzounian : a composer, performer, researcher and professor of music at Queen’s University Belfast. Gascia spoke about some of her recent projects, including music she has written for sleeping audiences, and a label she founded that publishes interactive music and sound art. Gascia also talked about a project with the architect Sarah Lappin, called Recomposing the City. This is a project in which architects and sound artists come together to find new ways of approaching the built environment and the city through sound, and the aural dimension of space. Afterward, we shared sounds by a wide range of artists that consider space and architecture in their work.

Urban Ruins & the Industrial Soundscape featured excerpts from the matralab / Pop Montreal Symposium entitled Uncovering Space: including a talk by Andrew Emond who is the author of Under Montréal, a resource established in 2009 to document Montréal’s underground infrastructures. We also played back a series of Smithsonian Folkways train recordings throughout the episode.

Montréal Sound Map Soundtracks II was a continuation of our first episode.

Uncovering Space
20 SEPT, 14H00-16H00
Presented by matralab in collaboration with Pop Montréal and curated by Jen Reimer

Featuring Andrew Emond (Under Montréal), Douglas Moffat, Will Straw & Jen Reimer & Max Stein, moderated by Sandeep Bhagwati

In the 12th century, architects and composers would work closely together to create a sacred space: the listener and the viewer’s experience were considered when building these environments. The space itself was an integrated experience: there was no separation between music and architecture.

Now, many urban spaces are utilitarian and exist as a host for transience: moving cars, buses, trains and people from point A to point B, without consideration of the passer-by or viewer’s experience. Many of these spaces are vast and resonant, almost like cathedrals in themselves. Can these spaces be re-imagined in a way to become more integrated and experiential? How can the space itself become a memorable experience for those passing through?

As the city grows and expands technologically, there are more distractions pulling us further away from the physical world – our sense of community and the spaces we inhabit. Perhaps it is the responsibility of the artist to redirect people’s gaze and draw them closer to the space they are in: through creating a new narrative that takes into consideration the viewer and the listener – perhaps we will all experience the space in a new way.

How can artistic interventions create new awareness of urban spaces? Uncovering Space is a presentation and discussion that explores the aesthetic re-framing and re-imagining of built space.

-Text  by Jen Reimer

Sound artist and site-specific performer Jen Reimer meditates on her fascination with resonant spaces, explaining how seeking out a space to practice the french horn instigated her creative process, and eventually a generative collaboration with sound experimenter Max Stein. Hear recordings of their performances in a former cistern in Mãe d´Agua, Lisboa and an old chimney at Skagaströnd, Iceland. This episode also contains a reading from Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. Originally aired on CFRU 93.3FM on Dec.4, 2014.

Click here to hear the podcast